It was a beautiful night on the planet of Serenno: the stars were shining brightly in the night sky and the full, round moon shone even more brightly, casting long shadows on the ground.
But the beauty of the night was grimly contrasted with the mostly desolate terrain of the earth upon which the moonlight shone. The land of the planet of Serenno had once been beautiful: green, lush and good. Certain parts of it still were, but most of its eastern side was dead or dying, or only just starting to recover from years of abuse. Once Serenno had had many thriving cities filled with people: men, women and children. But many years long ago Serenno had been conquered and occupied by the tyrannical Galactic Empire. They had plundered the planet of much of its wealth, drained it of much of its resources, and driven away or killed most of its people.
But just a few years ago, the Empire had been defeated by the Rebel Alliance, which had then replaced it as the New Republic. Now, Serenno was mostly abandoned and avoided by sentient beings… except by a certain few groups.
On the far western side of Serenno, there was still greenery and resources available, for that was one of the few parts of the planet that the Empire hadn't greedily bled dry. High in the mountains above a vast valley, there was a massive quarry and next to that quarry was a large, metal base. It was lit by several bright lights and defended by several huge gun emplacements on big towers. There was a large metal platform on the edge of the base with a few ships on it.
This base and quarry had once belonged to the Separatist minions of Count Dooku: former Jedi Master turned Sith Lord and the last member of the ruling Great House of Serenno. After Dooku's death and the fall of the Separatists, the Empire had taken over the quarry, along with all other mines and quarries on Serenno. But now the Empire was gone and the quarry was full of armed and dangerous gangsters from Crimson Dawn: one of the most powerful and ruthless crime syndicates in the entire galaxy. Crimson Dawn had wiped out the Imperials that had remained in the base after the fall of the Empire, and now it was theirs. The base was in fact just one of many secret bases owned across the galaxy by Crimson Dawn, which years ago had been forced into hiding by the Empire and had only been able to come out after it had fallen. It was a base where they brutally trained animals, and hoped to harvest as much resources from the land as possible. The databanks in the depths of the base also held important information, such as research on Serenno's history and resources, and the locations of some of Crimson Dawn's other bases.
A tall, lanky, dark-skinned, short-haired human male thug named Finiren was in charge of the base. Right now, he was busy with several of his subordinates herding a group of Fathiers into their cage. Fathiers were large, donkey-like creatures with brown fur, large ears, and four long, hoofed legs. They had once been used by the rich nobles for racing. Now, Finiren and his fellow thugs used Fathiers as meat or beasts of burden. Fathiers were some of the fastest moving mammals in the known galaxy, and were good for many purposes such as racing and moving carts.
There were also several Wookies in the quarry. Wookies were tall, furry beings who communicated solely through animalistic growls and grunts, and possessed immense physical strength greater than that of most other sentient species. It was sadly because of this that they were often used as slave labor by cruel and arrogant beings.
Crimson Dawn had been using the Wookies and the Fathiers as cheap labor in their mining operation for over a month. The Wookies mined the precious materials from the quarry and then put them into the metal carts, which the Fathiers then pulled to the base where the transport ships waited to take them off world. It had been yet another long and hard day of work, and the thugs were finally herding their slaves back up to the hill where their cage was.
"Get in that cage you filthy animals!" Finiren barked, electrocuting one of the Fathiers with his electro-staff. The poor creature screamed in agony and moved faster.
Finiren's subordinates laughed cruelly. They enjoyed abusing the animals. They saw them as inferior life-forms, with no rights and no feelings.
One of the Fathiers was slower than the rest. It had been pushed too hard. Soon, it collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
"Move it, you lazy filth!" Finiren barked, hitting the Fathier with his staff. But the Fathier couldn't move. It was too exhausted from such a long day of work with no food, no water and no rest.
Without any hesitation or remorse, Finiren pulled out his LL-30 blaster pistol and shot the exhausted, half-starved Fathier in the flank. The Fathier collapsed and lay still.
Finiren and his friends laughed again, louder than before.
"Get back to work!" Finiren snapped after he had finished laughing. "The boss wants these resources shipped out by tomorrow!"
The thugs immediately resumed their work and after it was finished they headed back into the base to rest for the night, leaving the Fathier's body to rot in the open.
They did not see the fallen Fathier's chest heave up and down… or a pair of angrily narrowed eyes watching from the shadows of a tree in the distance.
The next day, the thugs resumed their slaves… or rather they resumed forcing their slaves to do the work. They herded the Fathiers and the Wookies, forcing them to mine and transport the precious materials in the quarry even faster.
Then, quite late into the day, one of the thugs who were standing guard noticed a Fathier outside the perimeter, where it wasn't supposed to be. "Hey, what's that Fathier doing there?!" he shouted.
The thugs quickly drove the Fathier back into the herd. To their mild surprise, it did not resist at all.
Finiren stared at the Fathier. It looked suspiciously like the one he had killed yesterday, but then he shrugged. All Fathiers look alike, he thought dismissively.
Half an hour later, Finiren and his henchmen put most of the Fathiers and all of the Wookies back in their cage, far more roughly then necessary. Then, they headed back into their base, forcing several Fathiers to pull along a platform stuffed with crates ready to prepare the resources for shipping off world and out of the solar system.
They did not notice one of the Fathiers back in the cage look at them with something remarkably like hatred.
"Get those crates loaded onto the ship, quickly!" Finiren barked out when he and his henchmen had reached the platform. His cronies obeyed, picking the crates off the platforms which the Fathiers had pulled along and loading them one by one onto a nearby, 100 meter long transport ship.
Finiren smiled. Soon, the crates would be loaded up and shipped off-world to his boss, Lady Qi'ra, and she would reward him.
The thugs were only half finished, when suddenly, in the distance, there was a loud growl followed by a wild neigh of fear and a thundering sound of many hooves and foot.
"What was that?!" asked Finiren.
"It sounded like the Fathiers!" cried one of his men.
The thugs rushed back to the cage. It took them over a minute to reach it, and when they arrived, they found it open and empty. They looked down and saw a trail of many hoof prints on the ground. Then, they looked up and at the forest several hundred meters away just in time to see the Fathiers disappear into it, running as fast as they could away from their horrible prison.
The Wookies were nowhere to be seen.
"What the hell happened?" asked Finiren angrily. "How did those stupid animals get out?!"
His men checked the cage. But it bore no sign of being forced. Someone had opened the door!
"Who left the cage open?!" Finiren barked.
His men all shook their heads.
"Search the area and lock down the perimeter," ordered Finiren. "Find any saboteurs!"
Finiren's men spread out to carry out his orders. So focused were they on their current task that they did not see a snake slither into the base.
All of Finiren's men searched the perimeter and the edges of the forest for over fifteen minutes, but they found nothing. The Fathiers and the Wookies had all escaped. And there was no sign of any saboteurs.
"Oh, never mind," grumbled the impatient Finiren. "We'll catch those dumb animals again before long. Besides we can always get more anyway. Let's get the ship moving. We're slightly behind schedule already. Lady Qi'ra won't tolerate any more delays."
So the thugs returned to the landing platform, where they spent another five minutes to finish loading the cargo onto the transport ship. After it was finished, Finiren pointed to four of his men. "You four, you're coming with me. The rest of you stay here and continue the operation." Finiren turned to a tall, muscular male Zabrak with demonic-looking horns and a nasty toothy grin. "Gundeck, you're in charge until I get back. Try to catch those wretched animals while I'm gone."
"Yes, sir," Gundeck said with a polite salute that contrasted his nasty, toothy grin.
Turning away from Gundeck, Finiren and his four men boarded the transport ship. As he walked through the ship, Finiren opened the lid of one of the many crates to take a look at the precious resource inside. It was Sacanium. A very rare, jet black-colored mineral ore that was found only on Serreno and a remote few other planets, Sacanium was stronger than most other ores when refined. This was just the first of many shipments of Sacanium which Crimson Dawn intended to use to strengthen their forces and machines. Qi'ra would be pleased.
Finiren and two of his men went to the bridge while the other two stayed in the cargo bay to keep an eye on the crates to make sure they were securely strapped, for Sacanium was not only very valuable, it was somewhat brittle in its natural state.
On the bridge, Finiren stood and watched while his two pilots sat down in chairs and pushed buttons to start the ship up. The ship's engines hummed and quickly warmed up. The ship took off and flew into the sky.
"Set the coordinates for the jump to hyperspace," Finiren ordered the pilots, who immediately began typing in the numbers for the navigation-computer.
Finiren pressed a button on his wrist-mounted com-link. "Guys, is the cargo secure?" He asked. To Finiren's surprise, there was no response. Only static. "Answer me!" he snapped.
Static.
"Alright, get on the bridge, you fools!" Finiren shouted.
Static.
The two pilots started to feel uneasy.
Finiren stamped his foot. "If you two dogs don't answer me right now, I'm going to come down there myself and give you a damn good beating!"
Static.
Suddenly, the bridge door slid open.
Thinking it was his two men, Finiren turned around to give them a damn good discipline. "Well, where the fu-" he trailed off.
It wasn't his men…
Back at the Crimson Dawn base, Gundeck the Zabrak prepared himself and his fellow thugs to hunt down the escaped Wookies and Fathiers. Gundeck was a cruel and tough criminal who loved killing: he had relished in gunning down the Stormtroopers that had remained on Serreno. He was going to enjoy it. Like his comrades, he enjoyed hunting and abusing animals.
After the thugs had fully prepared themselves for the hunt, they went outside. But as they stepped out of the base, they noticed something rather odd.
It was quiet… too quiet.
Suddenly, Gundeck's wrist comlink beeped. He pressed a button and the voice of one of his fellow thugs, a Zygerrian woman named Agatha said, "Gundeck, there's something wrong with the scanners! They're not working!"
"What?" asked Gundeck. "But how?"
Before Gundeck could finish his sentence, a shadow swept over the base. Startled, Gundeck and his cronies and every thug that was on the base's towers looked up to see what had just flown over them, but before they could look at it long enough for their brains to memorize even its basic appearance, several huge plasma beams suddenly came out of nowhere, puncturing huge holes in the ground and sending flames everywhere.
Gundeck and his men were knocked off their feet by the sheer force of the blast and they landed on their heads.
More cannon fire rained down, reducing the base's gun emplacements and its main communication beacon to ash, but leaving the base itself mostly intact.
When Gundeck opened his eyes, he could barely see. He was dazed and disoriented, and he could not move. His ears were ringing and his head was pounding. Slowly, he managed to raise his head a little. His comrades were lying burnt and motionless around him. He was the sole survivor of the initial blast!
Then, as the ringing in his ears faded, Gundeck heard the faint humming sound of engines. He looked toward the sky. Through the smoke, he saw three strange shapes flying towards the base. Two of the shapes looked like giant cockroaches holding spears. The third shape looked like a huge, double-bladed axe. The flying axe stopped about thirty meters away from where Gundeck lay, hovering six meters above the ground. Then, there was the swishing sound of an opening door, and several large shapes dropped from the axe-shaped thing, which Gundeck realized could only be some kind of ship.
For a few moments all was quiet once more.
Then, Gundeck's blood froze in his veins as he heard several soft, hissing voices say in perfect unison, "Asmodeus. Asmodeussss."
His limbs shaking, Gundeck raised his pounding head a little higher. He saw five strange creatures calmly walk through the smoke. These creatures were unlike anything he'd ever seen. They were taller than the Wookies and were so heavily armed they looked like walking weapons.
The monstrous creatures came closer and closer. Four of them walked right past Gundeck and headed for the base. But one of them stopped right in front of Gundeck.
The last thing Gundeck saw before darkness claimed him was the flash of a razor-sharp blade swinging down at his head…